Giving
Away the Farm

Once
again, the Park District is planning to let a private company
operate on publicly owned lakefront property. And if the city
doesn't negotiate a better deal than it did on Soldier Field and
Millennium Park, the taxpayers will get screwed one more time.

The
Park District has released only the bare bones of its plan to rent a
chunk of Northerly Island to Clear Channel, the multibillion-dollar,
Texas-based media conglomerate that plans to charge the public to
attend a series of summer concerts there. The deal, approved by the
Park District board on February 9, is the latest twist in Mayor
Daley's attempt to transform Meigs Field and Northerly Island into a
public park open to all free of charge. The park wasn't a bad
idea--the public should be able to enjoy as much of the lakefront as
possible. But Daley has never had the money to back up his vision,
and the ham-fisted way he shut down the airport only put that vision
farther out of reach.

Daley
underestimated public support for Meigs Field when he announced his
plan to rip it up in 1996. "There's a long tradition of an
airfield on Northerly Island," says Steven Whitney, a suburban
businessman and pilot who founded Friends of Meigs Field shortly
after Daley made his announcement. "Mayor Daley liked to write
us off as a bunch of fat cats. But in fact, most of our support came
from working people who don't even fly."

Whitney
and his allies argued that Meigs had pumped hundreds of millions of
dollars into Chicago's economy while relieving congestion at O'Hare
and Midway, and they got support from the Sun-Times, the Tribune,
Governor Jim Edgar, and state legislators from both parties. Worried
that the fight over Meigs might jeopardize his plans to expand
O'Hare, Daley grudgingly backed off. In December 2001 he and
Governor George Ryan agreed Meigs would stay open until 2026.

But
soon Daley and some of his key aides--including Timothy Mitchell,
who's now superintendent of the Park District--were privately
plotting to close Meigs. On the night of March 30, 2003, about a
month after his reelection, Daley sent crews to bulldoze the runway.
He then declared that he'd done it to prevent terrorists from using
it to fly airplanes into Loop buildings.

Probably
a stretch. But according to the Tribune, bulldozing the runway and
relocating the fire department's air-rescue base cost the city at
least $4 million, $2.9 million of which came from Federal Aviation
Administration airport-development funds. Using development funds to
destroy Meigs pissed off the FAA, which wants to impose fines of
more than $8 million. City lawyers are still fighting with FAA
lawyers over that.

The
mayor and his strategists probably assumed the public would forget
about what the demolition had cost the city once they began enjoying
the new park. But the city's probably further now from getting that
park than it was when Daley proposed it in 1995. Back then the
economy was booming, and the city could afford major capital
expenditures. Now the economy's in the dumps, and there's no money
to build another big lakefront park.

So
it wasn't surprising when Mitchell announced on February 7 that the
Park District planned to build an 8,000-10,000-seat concert venue on
Northerly Island to raise money to build the park. He said it was a
wonderful deal for the taxpayers because it would generate about
$800,000 a year in rent. It would be open only 25 to 30 times a
year, so it wouldn't inconvenience most park users. And it was
temporary--Clear Channel was getting just a five-year lease, though
Mitchell left open the possibility that the lease could be extended.

Those
claims echo the claims Daley and his aides made about Soldier Field
and Millennium Park when they tried to sell them to the public: they
underestimated the construction costs and overestimated the return.
According to the Park District's own budget records, Soldier Field
will bring in about $19.8 million in rental revenue this year. But
the Park District has to pay $11 million to the private firm SMG to
operate Soldier Field, $4.2 million on loans it borrowed to build
the new stadium, and $3 million to rent new offices because its old
offices, which were free, were demolished to make way for the new
stadium. And that's not counting the money that's been budgeted to
cover security, utilities, and garbage collection. "You could
argue that no money is coming in for the taxpayers out of Soldier
Field," says Erma Tranter, president of Friends of the Parks,
an advocacy group that opposed the stadium deal.

Millennium
Park, built on the promise that it would raise enough money to pay
not only for itself but for underfunded neighborhood parks in poor
communities, isn't helping taxpayers out either. As I wrote on
February 18, the public paid at least $270 million of the
construction costs, and the loans were supposed to be repaid with
revenues from leases and parking fees. One of the big moneymakers
was supposed to be the Park Grill, the restaurant at Randolph and
Michigan. But according to the Park District, as of February 1 the
restaurant had paid only $162,656 in rent since it opened in
November 2003. And given that the Park District agreed to pay for
the Park Grill's gas and garbage collection, it's probably losing
money on the deal.

City
residents lose in another way when control of public property is
handed over to a private company. Soldier Field is virtually
off-limits to members of the public unless they're paying an
admission charge. SMG even charges $15 for a tour. Local high school
football and soccer teams can't practice there--though money that
might have gone to the public schools was used to build it--because
they might damage the grass. And the Park Grill is allowed to close
off parts of the park for concerts and special events the public has
to pay to attend.

I
understand that the city's broke and that this is one way it can
generate revenue. But the public's paying for these projects, and
private companies are profiting from them. If we're going to give up
some access to the city's most treasured assets, let's at least make
some money on the deal.

The
Park District and Clear Channel have just started negotiating their
contract. In 1996 the Park District estimated it would cost about
$26 million to build a park on Northerly Island, a figure it hasn't
updated but which has undoubtedly gone up. The $4 million the
concert venue will bring in over five years won't even cover the
cost of destroying Meigs Field, much less building the park.

If
the Park District plays it as it did with the Park Grill, Clear
Channel will also get exclusive rights to concessions and kiosks.
And maybe taxpayers will get to foot the bill for private security
guards to shoo away Mexican ice cream vendors the way guards have
been shooing photographers out of Millennium Park.

"The
irony is that this really is a deal that only benefits fat
cats," says one member of the Friends of Meigs Field who didn't
want to be named for fear it would alienate Daley further. "If
there was any kind of public scrutiny in this city--if the Park
District board was anything more than a rubber stamp--they'd have to
kill this deal."

Here's
an Idea: How About an Airport?

Steven
Whitney is hoping public anger over the Clear Channel proposal will
help him bring back Meigs Field. In 2003 he and other members of the
Friends of Meigs Field designed a 25-acre park on Northerly Island
with a nature walk, prairie grasses, lagoons, gardens, and a museum
showcasing the history of aviation in Chicago. And of course a
rebuilt Meigs Field.

Whitney
and his allies presented their plan at a Park District budget
meeting that December. The board members asked no questions and made
no comments. And they've expressed no interest since. But the group
says the deal's still on the table.

Whitney
and other group members think the city could take advantage of the
FAA's Airport Improvement Program, which covers 95 percent of the
cost of projects that alleviate air-traffic congestion. As Whitney
explains it, the FAA would pay the city to buy Northerly Island from
the Park District. "Our estimate for that land's value is about
$141 million," he says. He figures it would cost about $25
million to build the park and lagoon, and $10 million to repave the
runway, and the rest of the money would be the Park District's to
spend as it chose.

It's
a little hard to understand why the FAA would want to pay $141
million to transfer Northerly Island from one entity controlled by
the mayor to another entity controlled by the mayor, especially
since it's the same mayor who wrecked the runway. But Whitney thinks
the FAA would be interested, and he has a letter from the agency
saying it wouldn't automatically oppose the idea. "From the
FAA's standpoint it makes sense, because reopening Meigs alleviates
congestion at O'Hare and Midway," he says. "At its peak,
Meigs handled about 80,000 operations--takeoffs and landings--a
year."

The
plan's backers know they're not likely to get the city's support
anytime soon, certainly not while Daley's in office. "I don't
know if Mayor Daley could ever admit he was wrong about Meigs,"
says one member of the group. But they figure that as long as the
city's looking to make money from Northerly Island, it ought to
consider a plan that might actually generate some.

Who
Was on That Committee Anyway?

Timothy
Mitchell seemed pleased when he announced that the Park District had
chosen Clear Channel to operate the music venue on Northerly Island.
He said a five-person selection team of Park District employees had
chosen the Texan media conglomerate over its local rival, Jam
Productions, after studying their bids and interviewing both
companies. He said the committee had determined that a contract with
Clear Channel was in the taxpayers' best interest.

Yet
the selection of Clear Channel is controversial. According to
Mitchell, it will pay the Park District $800,000 a year for the
right to run the venue. But Jam cofounder Jerry Mickelson told the
Sun-Times that his company offered to pay $1 million or more.
Mickelson, whose lawyers have told him to stop talking to reporters,
also told the Sun-Times it's "not healthy" to have
"one company control two major outdoor venues" in one
market. (Clear Channel also books the Tweeter Center in Tinley
Park.)

After
Mitchell made his announcement I heard from two good sources that
Laura Foxgrover, director of the Park District's Department of New
Business, was on the selection committee. She's been a central
figure in the soap opera involving the Park Grill restaurant in
Millennium Park: she's the mother of Matthew O'Malley's child, and
O'Malley co-owns the Park Grill, which managed to get a remarkably
generous lease from the Park District during the time he and
Foxgrover were involved.

Last
summer the Park Grill sponsored a series of jazz concerts in the
park, for which it charged admission, and the cosponsor was WNUA, a
radio station that's owned by Clear Channel. So I wanted to know if
Foxgrover really was on the committee that was considering a city
contract with a company that does business with the father of her
child.

When
I called the Park District about Foxgrover, spokesperson Michelle
Jones told me, "I think you're going to have to file a Freedom
of Information request to get that." Later she called back to
say I shouldn't bother with a FOIA request. "We do not release
the names of the evaluation committee prior to the completion of the
negotiations," she said. "All I can tell you is that it
was a committee of five members and that never is a project of this
magnitude determined by one member."

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper
(not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.